Our Quail are Here!

It's a boy! And a girl! And a girl! And 12 more boys! And 7 more girls! And...

Actually, I have no idea how many boys and girls I have yet, but our quail are here! To refresh your memory, I was incubating 46 Jumbo Coturnix quail eggs. We noticed our first little pips (cracks or holes at the beginning of a hatch) on the morning of May 10th, and by that afternoon around 3:40, our first quail had hatched! It was so adorable and so tiny. Soon later it had a whole lot of brothers and sisters, too! Our final count was 36 successfully hatched quail, which was a hatch rate of 78%.  I'm very happy with that!

Lots of excited viewers!

My son was so excited about our impending hatch that he asked to invite his friend over to watch. He and his sister both came and enjoyed watching- especially his sister.

Here is the video of our first 2 hatching!

Here is the second video update a couple hours later.

I made one more video update yesterday. The quail have now moved from their little starter brooder, which was a plastic tote, and into a large cardboard box. They are 6 days old today and are doing wonderfully.

Check out this photo of their wing development as of today!  I can't believe how fast that start to feather out. All that feather makes for a lot of adorable jumping around and flapping, too. I just love to watch them run and play. It's like they are even surprised and impressed by their new abilities!

Most people who raise quail raise them in hutches, or small cages. I personally don't care for that idea. I wanted to give mine the opportunity to live on the ground, in a more natural environment. We are currently building them a beautful, large enclosure that is coming along great. I can't wait to get it finished up and move them into their new home!

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Our New Pet Journey!

For a long time now, I've been fighting the city in an attempt to get them to change their ordinance to allow for backyard chickens.  I was hopeful that they would see the light and give it a chance.  But... no such luck.  They didn't.  We had 3 councilmen vote in our favor and needed only one more.  This was our second attempt, so for now, I'm done fighting.  Maybe someday when we get a new council I will try it again.

As disappointing as this all is, I've come up with a solution that will work for me and my family.  We will be raising Jumbo Brown Coturnix Quail!  I did MANY hours of research to prepare for this new adventure and feel prepared and ready to go.  Quail are not mentioned as farm animals in our city's ordinance are are not specifially mentioned anywhere.


Last Saturday, Ryan drove me to Osseo, WI to pick up 40 quail hatching eggs.  The seller actually included an extra 6 eggs, so we came home with 46 new would-be quail!  I got them all rested, sanitized, and placed into the incubator.  Now it's been a week and everything still looks good.  I've been DYING waiting.  It seems like it's been so much longer than a week and I absolutely can't wait to see them hatch on or around May 10th.  How many do you think will hatch?  I really don't know what to expect- always a mystery.

Expect to see some cool hatching photos and/or videos as well as some pictures of tiny, fuzzy, adorable babies soon!

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